Captain's Log - Stardate 032023:1035hrs

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Fun w/ Computers

 

Earlier this morning, I had some issues with my system. I had opened Thunderbird (email client) and Firefox. The last email I clicked on in T-bird was a local TV News newsletter that I get every day. For some reason or another, that message (most likely the images in the message) seized up my T-bird. This is a VERY rare occurrence for me on this system. Anyway, here's all the **** I had to go through to get it working again...

 

- Used X-kill app to kill T-bird
- Restarted T-bird and attempted to delete the offending message
- This caused another lockup which killed my X altogether
- Had to HARD restart the machine
     - which trashed my ext4 journals on my primary drive
- After the reboot, could not access my /home partition, could not start X
- Had to boot system with portable Linux (Porteus) from CDROM
     - Utilized fsck to repair faults on primary drive
- Rebooted normally
- Manually removed all cache entries and the offending email from T-bird via command line before starting X
- Start X

- SUCCESS!

 

Strange, indeed. I'm still not sure what caused this. Ever since my previous vid card took a poop on me a month or so ago, I've been running with an older vid card that sometimes chokes on images; usually not causing major issues, though. Ah well... I'm keeping this old tank of a machine running with bailing wire and chewing gum. It's challenging some days.

 

Next time, I might not have so much patience...

 

 

[securitybreach]

It's the gremlins

[wa4chq]

13 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

Fun w/ Computers

 

Earlier this morning, I had some issues with my system. I had opened Thunderbird (email client) and Firefox. The last email I clicked on in T-bird was a local TV News newsletter that I get every day. For some reason or another, that message (most likely the images in the message) seized up my T-bird. This is a VERY rare occurrence for me on this system. Anyway, here's all the **** I had to go through to get it working again...

 

- Used X-kill app to kill T-bird
- Restarted T-bird and attempted to delete the offending message
- This caused another lockup which killed my X altogether
- Had to HARD restart the machine
     - which trashed my ext4 journals on my primary drive
- After the reboot, could not access my /home partition, could not start X
- Had to boot system with portable Linux (Porteus) from CDROM
     - Utilized fsck to repair faults on primary drive
- Rebooted normally
- Manually removed all cache entries and the offending email from T-bird via command line before starting X
- Start X

- SUCCESS!

 

Strange, indeed. I'm still not sure what caused this. Ever since my previous vid card took a poop on me a month or so ago, I've been running with an older vid card that sometimes chokes on images; usually not causing major issues, though. Ah well... I'm keeping this old tank of a machine running with bailing wire and chewing gum. It's challenging some days.

 

Next time, I might not have so much patience...

 

 

Sorry for the problems, glad you sorted it out.

[wa4chq]

12 hours ago, securitybreach said:

It's the gremlins

Gremlins are like flying monkeys.....they're just plain evil.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Yes, gremlins...

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

2 hours ago, wa4chq said:

flying monkeys

 

Oh, man... those flying monkeys scared the poop out of me when I was a little fellow watching that movie.

 

[wa4chq]

I had an aunt who kinda looked like Miss Gulch....Margaret Hamilton....in the WoO.....

[V.T. Eric Layton]

I've seen her in many movies throughout my life, and to this day, when I see her, I still think of that d@mned wicked witch.

 

[securitybreach]

10 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

I've seen her in many movies throughout my life, and to this day, when I see her, I still think of that d@mned wicked witch.

 

 

Well she does look like one.

[crp]

you sure they didn't sneak a video clip into the newsletter?

[wa4chq]

23 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

I've seen her in many movies throughout my life, and to this day, when I see her, I still think of that d@mned wicked witch.

 

That's my aunt.  Where the hat dips down would be her hair. 

[wa4chq]

12 hours ago, securitybreach said:

 

Well she does look like one.

Some days she wasn't all that witchy...

[wa4chq]

10 hours ago, crp said:

you sure they didn't sneak a video clip into the newsletter?

I'm hoping there's popcorn!

[wa4chq]

[V.T. Eric Layton]

HA! Well, I've tons of pics like that in boxes around here, but the only one from back then that I have on my computer is this one (same year - '66):

 

 

BIG #3... First Baseman for the MacFarland Park Optimrs. (pronounced op-ti-misses); they were the wives of the Optimists Club husbands.

 

Oh, and this is also the pic that my brother has on his phone for me.

 

 

 

.

 

[wa4chq]

1 hour ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

HA! Well, I've tons of pics like that in boxes around here, but the only one from back then that I have on my computer is this one (same year - '66):

 

 

BIG #3... First Baseman for the MacFarland Park Optimrs. (pronounced op-ti-misses); they were the wives of the Optimists Club husbands.

 

Oh, and this is also the pic that my brother has on his phone for me.

 

 

 

.

 

Right on...but no Margaret Hamilton look-a likes in your pic.  My bro and I played ball when we live in Canada.  The team I played on was OK.  The coach's son played second base.  He had a plastic glove.  He would stand on top of the base.  That sums it up...  I pitched and played first. 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

2 hours ago, wa4chq said:

He had a plastic glove.  He would stand on top of the base.  That sums it up...

 

HAHAHA!

[wa4chq]

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, back on topic...

 

I'm still experiencing lock-ups... it's happened three times this week, one just a moment or so ago. It's so damned random, though. Doesn't seem to be anything to do with FF or TB. I'm pretty sure it's a vid card issue. I upgraded to the latest Nvidia drivers for this card just the other day (in Win and Slack). That hasn't seemed to resolve the issue, though.

 

It's annoying. Every time it happens and I have to HARD restart the machine, my ext4 journals all recover, but my vfat common partition requires MS Win disc check to fix.

 

I guess it'll die completely, eventually.

[abarbarian]

I have a GTX 460 you can have, buy you would have to pay the postage.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

 Thanks. I'll worry 'bout it when I need to worry 'bout it.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

The sage continues...

 

Since upgrading to the newest Nvidia drivers for this old card that I installed when the other one took a poop, the X issues are still happening, but I've noticed that they're only occurring when I'm on a graphic-intensive site like Google Maps or Mapquest. Doesn't happen every time, just every other, it seems. X just shots down and I'm sitting with at the command line with a bunch of X - errors listed above. The error alerts (and log entries) aren't very helpful, though.

 

I decided to try to revert to Nouveau drivers just a few moments ago, but it reminded me why I can't run Nouveau; they don't seem capable of giving me my full (native) monitor resolution of 1680X1050. When I try to run "X -configure", it errors out. So, reinstalled Nvidia and here I am. I'll worry about this some other time.

 

One of these days soon, I'll probably finally upgrade to Slackware 15. Maybe that will solve the issue? ^ shrugging ^

[securitybreach]

Good luck Eric

[wa4chq]

Yep, I hope you get things sorted out.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Meh... I'm not as anal about snit like this these days. A few years ago, I would have had this box torn apart on my workbench and installing/removing/re-installing this that or the other. Nowadays... nah. If it blows up, I deal with it then.

[wa4chq]

[abarbarian]

On 4/11/2023 at 12:19 AM, wa4chq said:

 

You guys are so so black and white, let some colour into your life now and then.

 

[wa4chq]

1 hour ago, abarbarian said:

 

You guys are so so black and white, let some colour into your life now and then.

 

Excellent!